Bøger udgivet af Eisenbrauns

Do shifts in material culture instigate administrative change, or is it the shifting political winds that affect material culture? This is the central question that Shlomit Bechar addresses in this book, taking the transition from the Middle to Late Bronze Age (seventeenth-fourteenth centuries BCE) in northern Canaan as a test case.Combining archaeological and historical analysis, Bechar identifies the most significant changes evident in architectural and ceramic remains from this period and then explores how and why contemporary political shifts may have influenced, or been influenced by, these developments. Bechar persuasively argues that the Egyptian conquest of the southern Levant--enabled by local economic decline following the expulsion of the Hyksos and the fall of northern Syrian cities--was the impetus for these changes in ceramics and architecture. Using a macro-typological approach to examine the ceramic assemblages, she also discusses the impact of the influx of Aegean imports, suggesting that while "attached specialists" were primarily responsible for ceramic production in the Middle Bronze Age, Late Bronze Age ceramics were increasingly made by "independent specialists," another important result of the new administrative system created following Thutmose III's campaign.An important contribution to our understanding of the transition between the Middle and Late Bronze Ages, this original and insightful book will appeal to specialists in the Bronze Age Levant, especially those interested in using ceramic assemblages to examine social and political change.

This book introduces the evocative but largely unknown tradition of Samaritan religious poetry from late antiquity to a new audience. These verses provide a unique window into the Samaritan religious world during a formative period.Prepared by Laura Suzanne Lieber, this anthology presents annotated English translations of fifty-five Classical Samaritan poems. Lieber introduces each piece, placing it in context with Samaritan religious tradition, the geopolitical turmoil of Palestine in the fourth century CE, and the literary, liturgical, and performative conventions of the Eastern and Western Roman Empires, shared by Jews, Christians, and polytheists. These hymns, composed by three generations of poets--the priest Amram Dara; his son, Marqah; and Marqah's son, Ninna, the last poet to write in Samaritan Aramaic in the period prior to the Muslim conquest--for recitation during the Samaritan Sabbath and festival liturgies remain a core element of Samaritan religious ritual to the present day.Shedding important new light on the Samaritans' history and on the complicated connections between early Judaism, Christianity, the Samaritan community, and nascent Islam, this volume makes an important contribution to the reception of the history of the Hebrew Bible. It will appeal to a wide audience of students and scholars of the Hebrew Bible, the New Testament, early Judaism and early Christianity, and other religions of late antiquity.

Julius Wellhausen was a monumental figure in the study of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Yet his methods and conclusions have been accused of antisemitism. This book offers a more nuanced view of Wellhausen's scholarship through a critical edition and translation of one of the last doctoral dissertations by a Jew in Nazi Germany: Friedemann Philipp Boschwitz's Julius Wellhausen: Motives and Measures of His Historiography.Boschwitz presents a deep, holistic analysis of Wellhausen, examining his work on ancient Judaism, early Christianity, and formative Islam together within the framework of comparative religion and cultural history. He also situates Wellhausen in wider German intellectual history, tracing the influence of Johann Gottfried Herder on Wellhausen and Wellhausen on Friedrich Nietzsche. In addition, Paul Michael Kurtz provides incisive commentary and archival materials that highlight Boschwitz's scholarly achievements and open new vistas onto Jewish intellectual history. Piecing together fragments from private letters and official documents, Kurtz shows the formidable challenges Boschwitz faced as a Jewish scholar under a discriminatory political and academic regime. The correspondence also reveals Boschwitz's rich social life and connections with major émigré thinkers, such as Salo Baron, Leo Strauss, and Karl Löwith. Ultimately, Boschwitz on Wellhausen brings together a fascinating wealth of published and unpublished material to tell an original story of great importance to scholars of the Hebrew Bible, the New Testament, and the Quran, as well as those interested in German Judaism and modern philosophy.

Since its publication in 2008, A Grammar of the Hittite Language has been the definitive Hittite reference and teaching tool. This new edition brings Hoffner and Melchert's essential work up to date, incorporating the dramatic progress achieved in the field over the past fifteen years.Heavily revised and expanded, the second edition recasts the discussion of topics to better serve the linguistically informed reader. A reorganized presentation of the synchronic facts makes them accessible to both Hittitologists and linguists interested in Hittite for historical or typological purposes. Part 1 provides a thorough overview of Hittite grammar that is grounded in abundant textual examples. Part 2 is a tutorial that guides students through a series of graded lessons with illustrative sentences for translation. The tutorial is keyed to the reference grammar and includes extensive updated notes. Taken together with Part 2: Tutorial, which guides students through a series of graded lessons keyed to this reference grammar, the work remains the most comprehensive and detailed Hittite grammar ever produced.

Designed to accompany A Grammar of the Hittite Language, Part 1: Reference Grammar, this tutorial guides language learners through a series of graded lessons with illustrative sentences for translation drawn from actual Hittite texts. The tutorial is keyed to the reference grammar and provides extensive and updated notes, a vocabulary list for each lesson, and a comprehensive glossary.

Over the last few decades, the field of trauma studies has shed new light on biblical texts that deal with individual and collective catastrophe. In The Language of Trauma in the Psalms Danilo Verde advances the conversation, moving beyond the emphasis on healing that prevails in most literary trauma studies. Using the lens of cognitive linguistics and combining insights from trauma studies and redaction criticism, Verde explores how trauma is expressed linguistically in the book of Psalms, how the trauma-related language was rooted in ancient Israel's external realities, and how psalms helped define Yehud's cultural trauma in the Persian period (539-331 BCE). Rather than assuming the psalmists' personal experiences are reflected in these texts, Verde focuses on the linguistic strategies used to express trauma in the Psalms, especially references to the body and highly dramatic metaphors. Current analyses often approach trauma texts as tools intended to help sufferers heal. Verde contends that many group laments in the book of Psalms were transmitted not only to heal but also to wound the community, ensuring that the pain of a previous generation was not forgotten. The Language of Trauma in the Psalms shifts our understanding of trauma in biblical texts and will appeal to literary trauma scholars as well as those interested in ancient Israel.

From the tragic young Adonis to Zashapuna, first among goddesses, this handbook provides the most complete information available on deities from the cultures and religions of the ancient Near East, including Anatolia, Syria, Israel, Sumer, Babylonia, Assyria, and Elam. The result of nearly fifteen years of research, this handbook is more expansive and covers a wider range of sources and civilizations than any previous reference works on the topic. Arranged alphabetically, the entries range from multiple pages of information to a single line--sometimes all that we know about a given deity. Where possible, each record discusses the deity's symbolism and imagery, connecting it to the myths, rituals, and festivals described in ancient sources. Many of the entries are accompanied by illustrations that aid in understanding the iconography, and they all include references to texts in which the god or goddess is mentioned.Appropriate for both trained scholars and nonacademic readers, this book collects centuries of Near Eastern mythology into one volume. It will be an especially valuable resource for anyone interested in Assyriology, ancient religion, and the ancient Near East.

2500 Ur III Sumerian documents (transliteration, index).

The present volume completes the critical edition of the political correspondence of Assurbanipal, the first part of which was published in SAA 21. The 163 letters edited here were sent from southern Mesopotamia and Elam, mostly by governors or other high-ranking local administrators and military commanders; almost all are addressed to the Assyrian king, although a few nonroyal letters are also included. As in SAA 21, the bulk of the correspondence dates from the civil war between Assurbanipal and Samas-sumu-ukin and provides dramatic eyewitness evidence of this turbulent time.The volume does not contain a single letter authored by Assurbanipal, but almost all the letters originate from recipients of the royal letters in SAA 21 and deal largely with the same political and military events as the corresponding royal letters. Altogether, these letters convey a multifaceted picture of the prolonged conflict, enabling a detailed reconstruction of its brutal course and consequences. As a firsthand account of a cruel war, this collection of letters is unique in Mesopotamia, with comparable sources known only from Greek and Roman times.

Following the great periods of national leadership by Moses and Joshua, the book of Judges depicts the stewardship of various judges that rose to power to solve local religious and military challenges in the premonarchic period. This volume provides a close reading of the entire book of Judges, taking seriously the distinct elements of the book and how they are interconnected.Elie Assis explores the ways in which the ideology and theology of Judges unfold through a careful literary analysis. Moving beyond the cycle of sin, punishment, and salvation, Assis demonstrates how differences in the descriptive language applied to each judge, as well as the evaluations in the opening and concluding chapters, provide clues as to the organization and message of the text. Most works on Judges focus on the historical background of the period or the historical process of the book's composition and seek to dissolve its stories into component parts. In contrast, Before There Were Kings points to the deep underlying unity of Judges and the function of the individual stories within the whole.New and carefully drawn insights related to the purpose of each section and the themes that shape the book as a whole make this a groundbreaking, programmatic contribution to research on the book of Judges. It will be of particular interest to students and scholars of the Old Testament and the Hebrew Bible.

This study uses modern linguistic theory to analyze a frequently recurring syntactic phenomenon in the Hebrew Bible that has thus far resisted explanation: ¿¿ ¿¿.The combination of the two particles ¿¿ and ¿¿ produces a construction that is notoriously difficult to describe, analyze syntactically, and translate. Dictionaries of Biblical Hebrew offer a dizzying variety of translations for this construction, including "that if," "except," "unless," "but," "but only," and "surely," among other possibilities. In this book, Grace J. Park provides a new approach that strives for greater precision and consistency in translation. Park argues that ¿¿ ¿¿ is used in three patterns: the "full focus" pattern, the "reduced focus" pattern, and the less common "non-focus" pattern. Her syntactic analysis of all 156 occurrences of the ¿¿ ¿¿ construction in the Bible lends greater clarity to the contested passages.Drawing on recent linguistic research into the typology of clausal nominalization as well as previous work on contrastive focus, this innovative project provides important new insight into the syntax of Biblical Hebrew. It will be especially valuable for scholars seeking to translate ¿¿ ¿¿ more consistently and accurately.

A collection of essays by scholars of the Hebrew Bible providing recommendations for how Jews and Christians can think theologically about the challenge of similarities between YHWH and other ancient gods.

¿esed (steadfast love, loyalty, devotion) denotes an important concept in the Hebrew Bible that is relevant to interpersonal relationships in every generation. In this book, Karen Nelson investigates New Testament approaches to that concept and the exegetical value of recognizing such engagement.This investigation employs an original hybrid of two methodological approaches: intertextuality, used to consider whether and how the concept corresponding to the Hebrew term ¿esed is appropriated in the New Testament, and categorization, used to analyze and compare instances of the categories ¿sd and ¿syd within those corpora. Nelson's work challenges assertions that the concept corresponding to ¿esed in the New Testament is agap¿ (love) or charis (grace). Rather, she contends that the parallel meaning is more likely to be evoked by eleos (the usual LXX rendering of ¿esed) or hosios (the usual LXX rendering of ¿asid). Nelson rereads selected New Testament pericopes in light of ¿esed, concluding that the presence of the categories ¿sd and ¿syd highlights the fulfillment and development of scriptural tradition, the enduring devotion of God, and the exemplary ministry of Jesus. In this rendering, ¿sd and ¿syd critique the contemporary socioreligious situation and encourage belief, enduring commitment, and appropriately changed lifestyles.Addressing a topic that spans the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament, this study will be of interest to New Testament scholars and to biblical scholars more widely, especially those who are interested in semantics.

Appropriate for beginning and advanced students of Biblical Hebrew, this easy-to-use reference provides a concise summary of basic grammar concepts in an accessible format. Condensed into a six-page trifold format, the Biblical Hebrew Grammar Card neatly presents topics such as prefixes, nouns, adjectives, and suffixes, as well as numbers, weights, and measures. The verb charts are straightforward and comprehensive, with hundreds of examples organized according to stem, tense, and root.

The Biblical Hebrew Vocabulary Card provides learners with easy access to the words that appear on almost every page of the Hebrew Bible. This six-page trifold study guide translates 1,600 of the most common words in the Hebrew Bible, arranged alphabetically, with straightforward and precise definitions. Along with the Biblical Hebrew Grammar Card, this card will provide a reliable and easy-to-use reference for students of Biblical Hebrew.